Proscia Inc., creators of AI-powered digital pathology software, signed a first-of-its-kind agreement with one of the largest dermatopathology labs in the country.

This agreement provides Proscia with exclusive access to pathology slides and expert pathologist ground-truth data for an array of high-impact, high-volume, dermatological disease states. As a result, Proscia is uniquely positioned to launch the industry’s first comprehensive dermatopathology-specific computational pathology suite later this year, implemented as a new module of the Proscia platform currently in use at more than 300 institutions worldwide.

“This relationship is a big step forward in Proscia's mission to bring computer intelligence to pathology,” says David West, chief executive officer at Proscia. “The number of pathologists in the U.S. is decreasing, while the need for biopsies is skyrocketing due to incidences of skin cancer steadily rising over the past two decades. The dermatology market presents a significant opportunity to transform laboratory economics and improve patient outcomes in the fight against cancer, and we are excited to build similar relationships with labs embracing this next era of digital and computational pathology.”

“I have long believed that digital approaches are the future of pathology, and Proscia continues to make significant strides towards that future,” says dermatologist and dermatopathologist Dr. Tom Olsen, Clinical Professor, Dermatology, Boonshoft School of Medicine, Wright State University; and President of DLCS-ClearPath, LLC. “The Proscia team’s deep experience, hardware-agnostic software, and cutting-edge pathology AI makes it a growing force in the field. I look forward to watching Proscia elevate diagnosis decisions and care in dermatopathology − and throughout pathology.”

Proscia began development of its artificial intelligence (AI) module for dermatopathology in August of 2017 on four disease states, yielding an unprecedented 98.8 percent accuracy. These results and development capabilities catalyzed the expansion of the agreement to 18 additional disease states, acknowledging the viability of Proscia's technology to measurably advance laboratory medicine and business economics.

The company says the new dermatopathology-specific module and agreement further validate Proscia’s advanced AI technology, which is designed to assist the pathologist by streamlining and refining the pathology assessment and diagnosis process in three ways:

Traditionally, pathology diagnoses have involved a single observer interpreting slides of tissue specimen through a microscope. Though this is a crucial stage in cancer diagnosis, this subjective approach is frequently stalled by inefficiencies and inaccuracies, according to Proscia. Proscia’s digital pathology platform—a modular, software-driven solution for digital pathology data management, collaboration, and image analysis—streamlines the process by enabling pathologists to extract and share data across multiple laboratories, hardware platforms, and colleagues. Pathology laboratories use Proscia’s cloud-based technology to annotate and collaborate on pathology cases, capturing an available global revenue opportunity by providing access to expert pathology for laboratories around the world.

Proscia’s computational pathology capabilities leverage the data annotated on the platform. Each slide helps train the AI to properly identify and diagnose tissue sample images. Repeated across thousands of slides, this combination of Proscia’s AI algorithm and a lab’s massive repository teaches the platform to conduct pathology diagnoses with unprecedented speed, reliability, and accuracy.* If your lab is interested in becoming a digital pathology partner, visit https://proscia.com/partner.

For those interested in further information on why institutions are going digital and how they approach best practices in digital implementation, join Proscia’s upcoming webinar in partnership with The Pathologist and Leica Biosystems: “Going Digital: The Whys and Hows of Adopting Digital Pathology at Your Lab.” This webinar and live Q&A will show how easy implementation can be by viewing example applications and important considerations for transitioning to a digital workflow and discussing the recent and future changes that digital pathology will bring to the laboratory space. Click here to sign up for the event, which will be held Tuesday, April 24 at 4:00 p.m. ET; and Wednesday, April 25 at 4:00 p.m. GMT.